Chapter 30
It was a glacial Saturday morning when Hannah left the boarding house, telling Lizzie she had an errand to run.
Lizzie didn’t pry and merely cautioned her to take care.
Hannah knew she hadn’t been the easiest to live with since she learnt of Henry’s death.
Sometimes she pretended to be asleep at night just so she could lie there with her eyes closed and not make conversation.
She couldn’t form the words to express how heavy her heart was and how utterly hopeless everything now seemed.
Lizzie was wonderful and did her best to console her, but it was an impossible task.
Sometimes it was better without words. What was there to say now she had lost Henry and her beloved family?
Huddled in her coat, her hands stuffed deep in her pockets as the cold air rushed into her face, she hurried to the U-Bahn and soon emerged in Wilmersdorf.
This was her third visit to her old neighbourhood since she had returned to Berlin for this mission.
Each time, the pain of loss ripped through her anew, and she had to force back the tears as images of her parents and siblings floated into her mind.
She and her dear little sister Ruthi had played on this street as young children and passed hundreds of carefree hours in the park down the road.
That was before it grew too dangerous to go out in case the Hitler Youth set on them.
She passed the same elegant buildings from her youth in the tidy, tree-lined streets.
Apart from the blackout curtains and a slightly shabbier décor, it didn’t seem like there was a war on.
It was almost the same except that every trace of Jewish presence had been erased.
The storefronts she remembered, some of which were Jewish owned now bore new names as though the previous owners had never existed.
Hannah had resided in a fashionable, assimilated neighbourhood where Jewish and Christian families lived harmoniously in the same buildings.
Until the Nazis changed the face of Berlin, Hannah hadn’t given much thought to her Jewishness.
It just was. If she thought about it at all when she was a child, she saw herself as a German girl who happened to be Jewish.
But as the Nazi Party’s death-grip tightened around Jewish life and the Nuremberg Laws ensured Jews were ever more degraded as second-class citizens, Hannah, like many Jews, learnt the hard way.
They had never truly been accepted as German citizens, no matter how loyal they were to the country of their birth.
Many of their Jewish friends left in the thirties as life in Germany grew more threatening, some travelling on ships to Eretz Israel, and others seeking a new life in America or Britain.
Hannah’s parents clung to their German citizenship like a life raft.
They hoped things would get better and refused to surrender the life they loved in Berlin.
Hannah’s father, Daniel, had a stubborn streak, and even though they had family in Jerusalem who Hannah’s mother said would welcome them, he dug his heels in, and his wife supported his choice.
One of the many heated conversations between her father and brother in the kitchen flashed into Hannah’s mind. ‘I won’t allow these thugs to drive us out. Our family has lived here for generations. Why should we go? This is our home. Let them go if they don’t like it here.’
‘But Abba, there is no future for us here now. They hate us more than ever, and it has become intolerable. What would you have me do here?’
‘You will work in our shop just as you do now,’ his father replied.
A bitter taste rose in Hannah’s throat. Usually, she suppressed these painful memories and didn’t allow herself to think them, or she wouldn’t be able to function. And function she must, to perform the many acts of sabotage that she and Lev carried out in the south of France.
There was no room for sentimentality in her line of work.
Hannah straightened the glasses she wore and steeled herself for the inevitable emotions that would overwhelm her with what she was about to do.
It was unlikely anyone would recognise her in the old neighbourhood, now she was a grown woman, and her hair was dyed black, but it paid to be cautious, so she wore a pair of glasses she carried for disguise purposes.
Hannah ordered a coffee and sat in the café window seat, watching what she still thought of as her apartment building, resentment bubbling in her chest as it did when she allowed herself to revisit the past. The block warden, the same unpleasant man as when she lived there, stood on the street in front of the building, passing the time as he spied on his neighbours.
She had tried to talk herself out of returning yet again, but it had become a compulsion she couldn’t deny.
The previous times she’d just indulged herself by watching the entrance door to the building from this café.
She imagined what it would be like in the beautiful apartment she grew up in and of which she had many happy memories.
The apartment her family was forced to leave.
The apartment that was stolen from them and the shop below that was ‘Aryanised’ when they were arrested, and her whole life was wrenched from her.
Resourceful even at a young age, Hannah had hidden from the Gestapo and later returned to her neighbourhood to see if anyone or anything was left in their apartment and shop.
She had needed to see the remnants of her shattered life with her own eyes.
Soon after, she transformed herself from Hannah Stein into a formidable Resistance operative known as Angel, who carried out daring sabotage activities against the Nazis in Germany and France.
That’s what had led her to Jack, who recruited her to work with the SOE, and when she met Henry, his brother, it was love at first sight.
For a short while before the war erupted, Hannah dared to dream of a future with this wonderful man, despite losing everyone else she had loved.
Henry had promised her that after the war they would search for her family, and he encouraged her never to give up hope.
In Henry’s arms she glimpsed herself as the innocent young woman she once was instead of the hardened Resistance fighter who sought revenge on the monsters who destroyed all the good she had known.
The family she recognised as the residents of her apartment left the building, and she stood and paid for her coffee.
It was time. Today would be different. She hadn’t come only to observe, and as she crossed the street, she touched her lock-pick that nestled in her pocket like a lucky charm.
She hadn’t told Lizzie what she planned to do, partly because it wasn’t connected to their mission and would only endanger them both, and partly because it was safer for Lizzie if she knew nothing about her actions.
Lizzie would want to come along, and Hannah was confident she could execute her plan alone and be back at the boarding house in a few hours.
Her blood simmered as she passed her family’s former shop on the ground floor, making her head pound.
She kept her hands in her pockets and didn’t slow outside the shop, which was now called Textilien Hoffmann.
Soon after the shop windows were smashed, and the contents looted, an Aryanisation official had seen that the Stein name was removed from the shopfront as though it never was.
Glancing inside, she saw the interior was exactly as it was when her parents owned it.
Bolts of fabric lined the shelves, and there was the wooden counter where Hannah had sat with her mother during the school holidays, cutting fabric.
The door opened as one customer exited, and Hannah heard the familiar sound from her childhood of the trill of the cash register.
It had been a popular store, and Hannah’s parents worked tirelessly to make it a success and to offer the best service to their loyal customers.
Sadness rippled through Hannah as she wondered if some of the same customers still purchased their fabric in her parents’ shop.
A memory rose in her mind of when the Steins were so proud to expand their humble textile business into the larger premises and move into the apartment upstairs in the lovely neighbourhood. Her parents took such pride in fitting out the store until it was perfect.
Hannah stumbled, and the block warden jerked his head up and stared at her. ‘Fr?ulein, is everything alright?’
Hannah forced a curt reply and then darted around the side of the building before checking he wasn’t still watching her. She knew exactly where to enter to avoid him questioning her about the purpose of her visit.
Crossing the courtyard where she and Ruthie and Jacob had so often played together, a cruel nostalgia threatened to floor her, but she couldn’t stop even for a second.
There were the same old plant pots near one door.
The neighbour was kind to them and used to give them sweets when they were little, but as the anti-Jewish laws tightened, she kept her door closed and avoided the Stein children.
Damp laundry blew in the wind, and Hannah brushed beneath a sheet before accessing the back staircase. She and her siblings used to hide around here in their childhood games, as there were multiple escape routes and opportunities to get back to base.
Dear Jacob. How he had loved to be the winner.
Even though he was taller and older, she was as fast as a whippet, and sometimes she would hold back just to let him get to base first and claim his victory.
He was a good boy, and they had got on well, unlike some of her friends and their older brothers.
There were no Jewish children left to play in the neighbourhood, and for a second Hannah thought of the little girl hiding in the orphanage whom Lizzie had told her about. If Hannah hadn’t been old enough to fend for herself when the Nazis deported her family, that could have been her, or Ruthie.
Ruthie. Jacob.
This was the first time she had let herself think about them for more than a fleeting, painful memory in a long time.
It hurt too much. Were they with her parents in one of the camps?
Hannah dared not hope they were all still alive and together.
She knew too much about the horror consuming Europe from her connections in the Resistance to harbour any illusions about how deadly an operation the Nazis were running.
The echoes of mass murder rang in her ears as she stood in the shadows in the stairwell until the warden crossed to the other side of the front entrance.
When he was out of sight, she flew up the wide stone staircase as fast as she could, head down in case anyone passed her on the stairs, but it was quiet with no sign of the residents which is why she had picked Saturday morning.
Hannah arrived at her door on an upper floor and, after scanning the area to check no one was coming, she deftly picked the lock and let herself into her old apartment.
The floorboard creaked in the small hallway, and she froze near the umbrella stand that she recognised, her heart pounding.
She laid her ear to the inner door, but no sound came from inside.
The door handle responded to her touch, and she poked her head into the living room.
It was empty as she had planned, but she quickly checked all the rooms to make sure.
As she gazed around what had been her childhood sanctuary, anger surged through her again at how their home had been stolen from them.
Then she heard a sudden noise and ducked behind a chest in the corridor.
No one called out or emerged, so when all was quiet again, she crept back to the door that led to Jacob’s bedroom and pushed it open.
The occupant must have forgotten to close the window. Crows cawed noisily on the windowsill, and Hannah sank onto the bed in relief.
She had made it into her apartment, but the family could return at any moment.
What next?